The Ford Capri has been revived as a practical family car, and is a far cry from the original. But does it fit its brief of being a ‘sports car soul in a practical SUV’?  Ted Welford spends a month with one to find out.

As part of our job as car reviewers, it’s important to get behind the wheel of as much new metal as possible. The question I’m inevitably asked the most is ‘what car are you having next?’. 

So when it came to saying what ‘my’ car was for the Christmas 2024 break there were quite a few eyebrows raised when I said I was having a Ford Capri. It’s a nameplate that will still be familiar to many and despite the original being discontinued in 1986, it’s a car many over a certain age will have fond memories and attachments to. 

So it helps to explain the incredible interest it attracted when it was revealed back in July 2024. A reaction story after its unveil on our sister publication CAR received a barrage of comments, nearly all negative, and was the most viewed article on its website in 2024. 

Even six months on, if you’re to believe the internet, people are still rattled. I tweeted about the Capri upon first getting it, receiving comments such ‘I despair the way the industry is heading with all these bland SUV style EVs’, ‘as you drive down the street, do you see people shaking their heads?’ and by far the most common comment ‘it’s not a real Capri’. Damning, to say the least. 

But do people really care outside of the internet? Short answer, no. Most people don’t even give it a second glance, and after having the Capri for a month and doing more than 1,000 miles, only one stranger asked me about it, saying they liked how it looked more in person. I’d agree with them on that. So, like most things, it seems the things you read on the internet isn’t reflective of society, 

While most people tend to have a peaceful Christmas, mine coincided with a recent house move and renovation. The previous owner of my house fitted some rather hideous wooden fitted furniture back in the past, probably when you could still buy an original Capri, which I spent most of my two-week break removing. Like most house projects, it’s always a bigger job than it first seemed. 

But the Capri came in especially useful, and particularly its huge 572-litre boot for taking all of this awful wooden furniture to the tip. Seats folded, sheets down and I must have been about a dozen times to dispose of all the wood removed from the house. I was amazed each and every time with the Capri’s usefulness, and even with its sloped roofline you can still fit massive planks of wood inside. I’ve only been in an original Capri once, but can say for certainty it would have taken a lot more trips to the tip in the classic.

I also had the Capri when the weather took a turn for the worse. Though this test car is the four-wheel-drive ‘Extended Range’ model, it’s by no means a ‘4x4’ and you almost have to expect cars of this type to be a bit useless in ice and snow. Not here, though. I’m a bit of a child when it comes to snow and was gutted to wake up one morning to hardly a dusting, but you don’t have to travel far from here to find high ground where snow is guaranteed in bad weather. Sure enough, that was the case. I went down some very quiet back roads to test out the grip and traction, and was really impressed, even in areas where the snow was starting to drift, it had no trouble and I never once thought I was going to get stuck. 

The cold weather has exposed one issue with the Capri that I wouldn’t know unless I had it at this time of year, and that’s poor efficiency in cold weather. With this particular version, Ford claims 346 miles between charges, but when the temperatures are hovering around zero degrees, it was more like 200 to 220 miles. All electric cars travel far fewer miles than claimed in cold weather but it came as a real surprise as to how much worse the Capri was when the temperature drops. 

The only slight ‘issue’ I had with the Capri was a few software problems. The Capri is based on Volkswagen’s MEB electric car platform, which has had its fair share of niggles on cars such as the VW ID.4 and Skoda Enyaq. By now you would have expected them to be ironed out, but I did have a disconcerting red warning message once telling me to stop driving the car as the electric motor was too hot. Thankfully I wasn’t far from home at the time and had after stopping and starting the car a few times it seemed to clear the issue – and though it was only a one-off, it’s still not what you expect from a brand-new car. 

But overall after 1,100 miles and a month, I came away liking the Capri. Of course, it has next to nothing to do with the original model, and the marketing material calling it a ‘sports car’ is tosh. The best thing Ford could have done was give it a different name, but then it wouldn’t have got anywhere near the attention it has. However, if you think of it as a practical electric SUV, it’s very good at its brief, and is recommendable.